I don't climb up on buildings or towers any more to rant, rave, and yell, or even scream about the things that bother me. I don't go to bars and get into fist-fights, or brawls, over anything. I don't go to people's houses and get into arguments with them. I don't take drugs or drink, and go through suicidal overdoses. I just come to my blog and yell instead. But even though I consider this a remarkable achievement for me, taking all that acting-out and transforming it into mere words, for the purpose of blowing off steam, there are still way too many who cannot see what I do as anything other than negative and extreme. What you may consider negative or extreme, I consider art. It is the ability to capsulize my frustrations into poems, stories, and writings, and post them on this site. This is therapy for me. To write what I feel and think when I want, because I want to. This blog is my digital tower and building. Everyday I climb up here and scream and yell, so I don't have to live with all of it penned up inside me, and end up like I did before. Be that as it may, some of you can find nothing better to do than to complain about my life-saving process, as if it were something you have decided you must do, based upon your opinion of what I say here. You would stifle the creative process, if I let you, under the guise of good taste and rationality according to your moral compass. At times, I feel as though this is a lost cause for me, but this morning I woke up early, and realized the importance of what I am doing here for myself. If I were to abandon this blog, because of someone's disapproval of what I say, or may say, then I would cut myself off from the very outlet I created for the very purpose some find objectionable. Writing is a freedom. To write, unedited, is an art I understand and use. Editing myself, my feelings, and thoughts, for anyone else's comfort will not occur here. If you don't understand this, don't come here and read what I write. I am serious about this. Don't come here to see if I have violated some absurd moral position you hold, because I either have, or will. This is not an internet discussion forum for being for or against anything, it is my blog. I am angry, so what? Are you so incredibly fragile that you cannot bear my anger? Don't come here! I am intense, so what? So what if I'm intense, why are you so threatened by intensity and anger? What happens to you when you read me? What great threat to you am I that my words cause you such consternation? I know who I am, and I accept who I am. I am that pissed off guy, Bobby Jameson, who hates the music business and all it stands for, and all that it doesn't protect. I come here to say that, over and over again, because it needs to be said by someone. If you work for the music business, what I say probably bothers you. Good, you need some bothering. If I make you uncomfortable, good, you probably need to be knocked out of your chicken-shit comfort zone. But when you bring your zone of comfort here, expecting it to be appreciated, you are living in a state of unrealistic demands that I have no plans to abide by, ever. I could limit comments made here by some if I chose to, but I don't. You can say whatever you want, but when you come here anonymously and complain, I reserve the right to treat you like the chicken-shit you are. If you want to take up an issue with me, be my guest, but why don't you get the courage to complain and tell me who the hell you are? There are so many anonymous comments, I am continually forced to try and figure out who's commenting at any given time. Why is it so important to you to say something, while at the same time concealing who it is saying it? There are people who say things I don't agree with, but at least they have the consideration of telling me who they are. I do not take the position that I am right, or the position I am wrong, I just take a position and post it here on my blog. I may come back later and think I was completely full of shit, but I leave it, because that's what I thought at the moment. If I were concerned about being right, or moral, or justified, or any of those pathetic kinds of positions, I would not come here at all, for fear of making a mistake. I am a mistake. My whole life has been a series of mistakes, and I own that fact. After all I have told you about me, you cannot possibly think that I believe what I did was justified, nor do I. It's just what I did at the time. I post it for public consumption. I post my own foolishness, so I don't have to live my own foolishness. I paint it into words. I did not punch anybody today, I just wrote about it. I did not attempt suicide today, I wrote about it. Why would some of you seek to quash my right of self expression, particularly, since that right, answers the dilemma of human beings, "What do I do with all this shit?" I write on line, which means, in this case, you can read my thoughts, because I am not hiding them. I have invited you into my mind, to some degree, and allowed you to be part of the constant hurricane that I live in. But to have to endure complaints about my thinking, simply because I let you in on it, has started to become counter productive, to say the least. It might help if you came here thinking, "Well let's go see what that crazy bastard Jameson is thinking today." My mental health is based on my ability to take bad actions and transform them into words, thereby freeing myself from the necessity of taking the bad action. Everything I do here is to free myself from the need to suppress my thoughts and feelings. I come here for the exact reason some of you complain about, which is to "get crazy." You ought to try it sometime, because from where I sit, some of you would greatly benefit from the therapy of writing about your feelings instead of hiding from them. In years past, I would sit and think about the things that were driving me crazy, and after awhile I'd run out of space to keep all those thoughts and feelings inside. Then they'd get transformed into actions, tragic actions. Now I think about the same things as I did then, but I have a place to put them; here. I have the Bobby Jameson blog, where I get to be Bobby Jameson all the time, because I am Bobby Jameson all the time. I will not give up this place where I can be myself for your comfort, praise, or dissatisfaction. Some of you demand things from me, which I do not possess, such as peace and happiness, and a better outlook on life. I will be 33 years clean and sober on the 1st of April, so what I have is I am alive and growing. I've come a long way from where I started, and I didn't get much help from human beings or god, so I am stuck with me, the one thing on this earth that I can count on. Not AA or NA, or a church, or the state, or federal government, just me, my 90-year-old mother, and mentally-ill brother, that's it! Oh yeah, and this blog...
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Sunday, February 8, 2015
(part 280) Social Media And The Blast From The Past
As I became more active on the internet in 2007 into 2008 I began receiving messages from women I'd known in the past, primarily the 60's. I did not know how to deal with their interest, because I hadn't given it any thought until it happened. I was busy doing what I was doing. Writing this blog and gathering up old music of mine and making videos so I could post them. When I left L.A. in 1985 I concluded that no one particularly cared, or remembered me, and if they did it was not with any fondness, so when I got these messages I was surprised by them.
I remember well my initial reactions. I was skeptical and less interested than one might think. My past was my past, and these ladies were part of it. Since my belief was that I had failed as a musician, singer/song writer, and everything else, I was cautious at best when confronted with what appeared to be positive interest in me by woman who I'd not seen or spoken with since the 60's and 80's. Each of them wanted to get reacquainted online, which I agreed to do. At first it was on myspace, where I'd created a profile to post music, photos, and excerpts from this blog. I also wrote poetry there and posted it. This was where I began to mix with people again after a 22 year absence from that process. These were people who knew of my past, to some degree, and had also been part of it, unlike the people in San Luis Obispo, who had no clue as to what it was I used to do.
I made one request when I began the process of reuniting with these old friends, and it was simply this. "Please don't bring any bullshit into my life, because I already have enough. In other words, I am busy as hell with what I'm doing and won't stop for you or anybody else. I had to do that for me, as a way of protecting the decision I'd made to work and accomplish specific goals. I was not here to meet old girlfriends, I was here to work. It was already hard as hell, and I didn't want anything or anybody screwing with my emotions, so I laid down the rule. All of them gave me their word that they did not want to cause any trouble, but just wanted to get reacquainted and stay in touch as friends.
One would have thought this a reasonable enough request for me to make at the time, and to accomplish, but it was not. When dealing with human beings you have to deal with their opinions, desires, history, etc., and this was surely the case with each of these women in the beginning. One of them, Georgiana, would argue with me a lot on myspace messages. She was opinionated, as was I, and not very willing to use a softer touch. After one too many encounters with her I just flat out said, "Well fuck it Georgiana! I'll just quit talking to you altogether, and then I won't have this problem anymore!"
"No no, don't do that Bobby," she said, "I don't want to lose track of you for another twenty years!" "Ok, but gimme a break with this shit, because I got enough to do without this kind of aggravation!"
My fear was that I would get into rehashing old crap with someone whose opinion I didn't necessarily agree with, and get off track with what I was doing. I was writing about the early 60's at that time, and Georgiana was interested in talking, or arguing, about things I had not gotten to yet in the history I was writing about on this blog. I had not known her in 1963, 64, or 65, so she had no sense of what it was I was doing. She was also writing a book, and had her own opinions of how to do that as well. All in all it had to be quelled, so I could concentrate on what I was doing, not what she, or anybody else, thought I was doing. It was a tough go back then to keep focused on my goal and learn how to do everything by doing it, like use a computer, make videos, upload music, etc. I was stressed out by all the on the job learning, so arguing with some chick I used to know wasn't helping.
Paula was a girl I'd known in 1966-67 when I was living with Carol in West Hollywood. She and I had had a flash romance, but it ended abruptly when I didn't give her my full attention at times. Carol provided a lot in the way of creature comforts back then, and Paula was, from what she told me more recently, more interested in love, which I admittedly was not. I was a selfish son of a bitch trying to become a star in 1966-67 and was concentrated on the making and releasing of the album "Color Him In." At the time, Carol had more to offer on the money side than did Paula, so I was not about to cut myself off from what Carol provided. Like I said, I was a selfish son of a bitch trying to become a star.
On myspace Paula became my close friend. We talked a lot about Hollywood, old times, and what I was doing with the blog, trying to tell a story and make people aware of music they knew nothing about. She was supportive and easy to talk to. I didn't have any trouble with her until she got me involved in an argument, on myspace, with her ex husband, Chuck Negrone, and daughter. It was a preview of things to come, but at the time I didn't know that, so I weathered through it. Looking back on the incident now, it looms as a precise signal as to what I was in for with her, and the public persona bullshit of social media sites.
At the same approximate time, Sharon, also showed up from my past in a comment on the blog I think. She had been a Playboy Bunny and center fold, and I had had a flash relationship with her after Paula disappeared in 1967. I directed her to the myspace profile and she too became a friend. It would be fair to say I had no loyalty to any of these women back in the day, because as I said, and say again, my interest was in myself and what I was doing, not in falling in love. I cared, but only to the degree that it suited my own goals.
On myspace I introduced each of these women to each other, which at the time seemed to make sense. I had nothing to hide, I wasn't going steady with any of them, they were all people I'd once known and who now had reappeared in my life. It didn't occur to me that it would cause any problems, I mean, "Why would it?" It proved to be one of the dumbest things I ever did...
1967
2007
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